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Monday, September 29, 2014

I have been blogging since I was fifteen years old. I will be twenty two on Thursday. This post marks my one hundredth post.Thank you for following along with me. It has been a pleasure to me. I hope it has been for you as well.

Or, perhaps you like to read my blog, because my posts are so bad that you enjoy hating them. If that is the case then you are welcome. I am glad you have found them entertaining.

If you are just joining: Welcome aboard! I hope you stick around for my next seven years of blogging hilarity. Just kidding. By then blogging will have been replaced by a device that allows you to upload your thoughts straight onto the internet.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

I went to the city of Chicago this weekend to catch the last day of an exhibition of Josef Koudelka's photos at the Art Institute. Here are a few images from that day.

My feet are the red-shod ones. Yes, my socks looked that dorky all day. Before you throw fashion tomatoes at me (no, I do not know what those are) There are actually 2 specific reasons to justify the wearing of my men's Fruit of the Loom socks over my pants. (If you like the look I am achieving with my feet you can buy your own socks here or ask your own dad)

Reason #1: I was getting sick that day and I did not care what my socks were doing.

Reason #2: I sometimes leave my socks outside my pants if they happen to end up that way when I put them on as a memorial to my father. When I lived at home pre-college, I took it upon myself to be my father's outward appearance monitor. This entailed checking his nose hair status (too long, too crusty etc.), vetoing outfits, affirming outfits, calling him out on XYZ moments and of course telling him to untuck his pants from his socks.

So now that I am far from home in the USA my father has no one to help him keep his outward appearance presentable.

(Although this is not strictly speaking true. He can be pretty dashing if he chooses and my fashion-savvy mother will help him in dire situations. I just tend to be more vocal and obnoxious about "keeping my dad in check". But I do this out of the knowledge that the men in my family have the distinct ability to go from looking presentable and decent to looking like homeless wilderness men in a matter of minutes.)

I miss him a lot and so when I find that in the morning I have accidentally put my socks on over my pants, I like to leave them tucked. People remark on it throughout the day and I have an opening to talk about my daddy, whom I miss.

This guy is cool, eh?! I had to take this photo quickly because it was in the middle of the crosswalk in the city.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

When I turned 18 I set myself the goal of reading the entire Bible cover to cover. I will turn 22 on October 2nd and I would like to have finished the Old Testament by that time.

I took an introductory course in Bible and Theology last Fall and the professor, who is an OT scholar, asked the class if anyone read more Old Testament than New Testament in their personal reading. I was the only one who raised my hand, so I looked like a ridiculous OT show-off. I wanted to explain to everyone, "You don't understand, guys! I would read the New Testament if I could! But I am not allowed to yet because I am an insanely slow reader!"

Just me, making some new friends during Freshman year.

This project has been really hard to do because I have been so uninformed about the OT. So many of the things I was reading about like in the books about the prophets were confusing and boring.

You may ask, "Uh, Lucy Rose, why didn't you read some books on the side to help you understand? Why didn't you consult your family's bookshelf devoted to theological studies? And once you got back to America, where they have huge libraries of stuff in English, why didn't you read about it then? Why didn't you ask your parents to help you!? WHY DID YOU PURPOSEFULLY STAY IGNORANT?!"

Well, Folks, I just DID, OK?! I wasn't very smart about it. I also sort of told myself that I just read the Old Testament cold-turkey. I just hopped right in there and the turkey was very cold. Wait a sec…That sounded strange. Sorry.

Back to the topic at hand:

Now I am taking an Old Testament class, because after four years of Old Testament cold-turkey-ing about I will finally understand what the heck Ezekiel was about.

It is kind of like developing a weird friendship over the course of four years with someone who never talks about their family. Then one day you go to their family's house for dinner and you're like, "Oh my gosh! I suddenly understand this person a lot more. That's why they never eat meat!"

That is a weird analogy. But do you get the idea? I am excited to learn about the Old Testament from an academic perspective after having been forming this strange relationship with it for the last four years.

I both love and hate the Old Testament.

Three reasons I love the Old Testament:

1) God constantly reassures His people that He loves them and want them back

2) I love the Psalms

3) There is some really hilarious, weird stuff in it. For instance, God tells the Israelites not to walk on steps up to the altar because he does not want to be mooned by them. (See Exodus 20:5-6 which reads: "And do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private parts may be exposed.") Also take a second look at the book of Jonah. HE WAS SWALLOWED BY A SEA-MONSTER! That is just plain cool. (although if you read Jonah you will see that Jonah has little objective appreciation for the coolness of spending 3 whole days inside a sea-monster)Three reasons I have a hard time with the Old Testament: (the original title of this list was "Three reasons I hate the Old Testament", but that sounded very sinful)1) It is very long. Like thousands of pages long.2) There are some very boring parts which I do not understand (I am looking at you, Prophets!) 3) There is a lot of killing which makes it hard to understand God

All of the things on my second list are things that I am getting over thanks to my new class. It is a very hard class for me, but I am learning a lot. Here is a portion of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. This piece is exquisitely beautiful and I think it captures the essence of the Old Testament. God is using the entire OT to tell His people that He wants them to seek Him and come to Him. (See Deuteronomy 4:29 "But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.")

Friday, September 12, 2014

I have been swallowed up in school, which started a few weeks ago. I have been doing activities and homework and work (babysitting now!) every waking moment. That is why I haven't posted for a while. I am sorry.

Here are a few photos that I have taken in the last few weeks with my beautiful new phone. They are things that I have spotted and found to be beautiful. Hopefully you will enjoy them!

Love,

Lucy Rose Till

PS

I have been posting photos of my artwork on Instagram because it is pretty easy to do straight from my phone. My username is: tilllucyrose